Homeostasis
by Parallaxm
Summary: You must be inhuman to be godly.


Natural selection is imperfect. Callous. Conditional. Much like humans.

But Light could rectify that.

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Once is coincidence. Twice is suspicious. Thrice is fact.

But once is enough.

Tipping points rest on a seesaw of premeditation, the assembly of thousands upon thousands of arcane details interlocking to form history. Dozens of "he said she said" misunderstandings. The fire is already there—you just need the spark to see it. World War I was but the kinetic transfer of dammed potential. World War II seized the earth as its experiment, the humans its subjects.

Yagami Light seldom raised his hand in class; the teacher called on him regardless. The expectant pause in the man's voice was reason enough for Light to loathe Kouda Ryo. He abhorred the man with a silky arrogance, a distant smile through which correct answers filtered.

His answers were not accurate in every case, of course. He was not a machine.

But he answered _correctly_.

Reputation is a science, not an art. Humans take pride in the margin of social intuition that differentiates them from artificial intelligence. But from what Light had observed in his seventeen years, social cues were very much programmable. Slap a child's hand away from the carrot cake on display and the child will likely not repeat the action.

In theory.

There were two prime motivators, Light reasoned, for the persistence of failure. You repeated an action because you believed it superior to the alternatives, or went through the same process in an effort to achieve a different result, trusting luck to be on your side. Either rationale, he supposed, described a method befitting an imbecile.

He removed his loafers and straightened his uniform.

"I'm home."

Sayu mumbled a _hello_ from the kitchen through a mouthful of seaweed-flavored chips. Aside from when she had a pressing question or jibe, she hardly paid any attention to her brother. There existed a linear relationship between his academic excellence and how blandly he comported himself. She voiced her complaints liberally, but he would wave her off with the click of a shut door. She wanted his brains without the bore, not realizing that in the attainment of the former, the latter became a side-effect.

She coveted his certainty, his confidence.

The future was still hazy, and she had no guarantee of success.

But Light? His future was as his name—bright, perhaps even blinding.

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By the time he settled into his desk chair, his room had become dark.

The evening stole hours from the day, draining its warmth.

He blew lightly on his black coffee and focused on his laptop monitor.

_"Change begins with yourself,"_the documentary narrator spoke in a gravelly timbre. He cycled through a litany of crises in the same righteous tone, from energy security to fugitives of war. Light had accepted the DVD from his homeroom teacher to shut him up. Kouda Ryo had beamed when Light extended his hand. _I'm sure you'll appreciate the intellectual debate the film provokes. Right up your alley._

He ejected the disk four minutes into the introduction. After confirming the absence of fingerprints, he returned the material to its case with a tight, disappointed frown. There was no intellectual debate to be had. It was simply fifty minutes of desensitized blather meant to elicit a tear or two.

He could not imagine individuals "initiating change, starting with themselves."

They would much rather document the change once it had occurred, mindlessly passing the flame from one candle to the next.

They're debating the definition of justice while the wrong heads continue to roll.

Who will be left to clean up the mess, when all the dreamers have dosed off?

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He set himself a stringent bedtime: nine o'clock sharp.

He slept later in the spring when the sky had not plunged into darkness by nine. It seemed incredibly stupid to sleep without the night's blackness. He was not given to napping, as it only muddled his senses when he awoke. Sayu liked to catch him off-guard—it humanized him, she said. Light watched the devilish gleam in her eyes as she smirked and thought it rather dehumanized her.

Light detested winter nights for the chill in his blankets when he first settled into them. It felt like slipping into his own coffin. When he was sufficiently warm, he would remember he was still alive, and resent the revelation later as it had felt like admitting a weakness.

Glad for the spring, he shifted in bed and held out his hands, examining his palms in the faint glow cast from the rectangle of light beneath his door.

Had Chopin known, when composing his first Ballade at age twenty-one, that he was a musical genius?

He traced the fate lines in his left palm.

Chopin would have never made it, he concluded, if he had waited on his critics.

Genius does not require consent.

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It was inordinately cold for the month of March. Frost breathed over the roof tiles and window edges. Light approached his oak desk in the third row back, near the window. He had arrived thirty minutes early, as per usual. As he reached beneath his desk to pull it towards him, he flinched and recoiled.

Rooted to the underside of his desk was a wad of fleshy, pink bubblegum.

Still sticky.

Scraping the wad off with a ruler, he flung them both into the nearest trash bin with apathetic swiftness.

One incident.

One is all it takes.

Then war.

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They reviewed dynamic equilibrium in their chemistry lesson.

Light eyed the copper ions in the textbook, a bright, azure blue.

_How beautiful,_the students murmured. _If only English was as exciting as chemistry!_

He felt impatient for the bell to chime, and for a moment it seemed that he had sat on the wad of gum instead, that it was gluing him to his seat—that he would unduly embarrass himself if he so much as moved an inch upwards, tearing his slacks or taking the seat with him. His silence exposed him in the midst of the buzzing classroom. It made him alien. He heard his own silence as one overhears his own critic—with disdain, apprehension, and feigned indifference.

Fujioka Ayako marveled at the pictures in the book, giggling with awe.

Light recalled that she had recently texted "candid" pictures of the new transfer student, Suzuka Jun, to all of her friends. The pictures had featured Jun shamelessly stuffing her cheeks with snacks, rummaging around in her locker packed full of chips and sweets. "Guard your food! ;)" the caption read. "This one's a bulldozer."

He had not personally received the message, but it had been the subject of gossip for an entire week.

But of course, everything had an expiry date. Even malicious intent.

Right?

Or was it the victims that were expiring, and not the instigators.

The blue of the copper ion no longer appeared as guileless, and he turned instead to the window.

His central vision locked on a black notebook in the grass field. An aura of the occult surrounded the book, and he leaned closer, squinting. When he realized he had come within an inch of the window, he leaned back quickly, distancing himself from his reflection. When he regained his composure, the homeroom teacher flashed him a secretive smile, as if to tease, "I caught you ogling that first-year from the window."

Kouda Ryo smiled in a way that reminded Light of his grandfather, yellow teeth and all.

It made him deeply uncomfortable.

He returned the smile anyway, cheeks dimpling.

_The world is mocking me._

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The Death Note must have been his spark.

He knew by the awkward lull in conversation whenever his parents had run out of school-related questions that he was destined to be more than their "good boy"; they were appropriately proud of him, but he was proportionally bored with himself, jumping through one hoop after another.

Every last one of them, mundane. Predictable. Selfish. Pathologically hypocritical. He'd never had trouble making friends; keeping them was the impossibility. None were remarkably stimulating, and Light could not keep their company without the thought eating away at him in a slow-burn.

It was far simpler to love humanity rather than the distinct humans it comprised. Ideas did not betray. Ideas did not buckle and bend as the human psyche was wont to.

Yagami Light did not love himself—he loved the idea of himself, of what he could be.

How to explain to a girl who asked for his number with a coy little smile that he didn't give a damn?

The world will keep on spinning, the murderers will shoot, thieves will beg, cheats will sabotage, she will find a partner, settle down, and the world will keep on spinning along with its murderers, cheats and thieves.

And all she wanted was his number.

The world was mocking him.

Jeering, _if you can't beat 'em, join 'em._

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His ochre bed sheets were cold, like death.

To make matters worse, Sayu had recently been in his room, leaving the effluvia of lilies in her wake, as if to ready his very own casket. He opened his window to expunge the smell, braving the chill with gritted teeth. Light shifted around for an hour or so—not from ill conscience, but from the eerie knowledge that in the corner of his room hunched a seven foot tall Shinigami who never blinked.

"Are you going to stand there all night?"

Ryuk considered the question, eyes glinting with rabid amusement. "Guess not. That'd be boring." He passed through the wall, then bobbed back to impart with a wave, "See ya in the morning!"

Light studied his hands again, awash in moonlight.

They were the hands of a killer.

There was no blood, but the color red had been following him lately. Candy wrappers, paper cuts, and radishes.

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"Why do you care so much?" Ryuk grunted as he gauged a hole in the Fuji apple. "If your world is rotten, why not leave it? It'll decompose, just like this fruit. In the end it's the same."

The honor student laughed.

"You said it yourself. The world would decompose—poisoning the roots of the next generation. Everything would grow to be just as warped. Humans are creatures of habit."

"So you think you can interrupt the cycle?"

With his back to the Shinigami, Light replied, "Do you know the lifespan of a single red blood cell, Ryuk?"

Ryuk paused. "Eh? What's that have to do with anything?"

"One-hundred and twenty days. Trillions of red blood cells living and dying to sustain our existence from the first day to the last. All that effort expended—and for what? How many people achieve greatness in their lives? How many more succumb to the comfort of laziness and pettiness?" Light toyed with his mechanical pencil, twirling it between his fingers. "Not only do humans generate waste—they _become_ it. I'm only sweeping the streets clean of dirt and dust," he reasoned, smirking into his palm. "It's an ungodly, menial task, but he who succeeds will transcend it."

"But can you claim to be altruistic?" Ryuk chuckled, striding to the window. A toddler went past in her tricycle, ringing her bell with great zeal. "You said you were bored. Isn't this just a game, then?"

"I always had the will," Light murmured. "Now I have the means."

_Now I can make something where there was once only emptiness._

Gods did not bear intrinsic identities. They were known primarily for what they did. Light had yet to fill the vacuum of the title he had assumed.

He knew his quest was his ultimate tribute to humanity and its potential—yet he felt less and less human with each passing day.

He attributed the numbness to his ascension.

Everything that was meaningless before was now a test of patience.

He grew more aware of the sounds around him; the clink of a soup ladle scraping the bottom of the ceramic pot, the hiss of the convenience store doors parting, the grind of his toothbrush on his front teeth. Everything—everything was a factor, an opportunity to make a mistake. He felt the critical moments pass in slow motion as he walked the tightrope. The world had not yet seized upon his existence, but he felt a heady rush of power—the living, saturated power you can only grasp when you know you are going against everything you have been raised to believe.

He responded to his classmates when they prodded him, but it seemed to him that they were all origami—that he could unfold their every creased mannerism, that he could flatten them if he so chose—into a single sheet of white, lined notebook paper.

Empty.

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It is better to be confident because you know you are able than to be smug because everyone else thinks so.

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Kira watched a man convicted for the rape of a middle school girl gag on his own saliva, eyes bugging. The skin over his clavicle tautened spasmodically as he gasped for air.

"_No_," he rasped, having heard the rumors. "_I'm not ready to die, Ki—"_

He collapsed.

The news reporters, at a complete loss, simply stared at him. One man shouted something about going off air, but the cameraman froze, rapt with morbid curiosity.

_Of course you're not ready to die,_Light sneered inwardly, switching off the television. Sayu shuffled out of her room, eyes lighting up when she noticed Light getting up from the leather couch.

"Thank god! I thought I was going to miss _Gossip Game. _The season finale!"

Light dropped the remote into the eager hands of his younger sister.

_How could you be ready to die? You don't even know how to live._

_._

_._

_._

Light knew L didn't give a damn about "justice" and "morals." He wanted to catch Kira, yes, but in the manner of a cat ensnaring a mouse, not an officer arresting a criminal.

_"Morality is a social construct. And you know how I am with those,"_Light could imagine the detective murmuring slyly, delicately dropping a sugar cube into his coffee.

_Then why,_he snarled to himself. _Why waste my time when you don't give a damn about the world? I give a damn about the world so much that it makes me sick. Every goddamn company's advertising like they're vying for a fucking beauty pageant—world peace, save the children! But they're all capitalistic pigs._

_This is the world L has chosen to defend._

He eyed a "hidden" camera to the left of his bookshelf, gaze hitting dead center before flickering away.

_But it's to be expected—an equal and opposite force._

His breathing evened out.

_We're playing with the supernatural here. The laws of motion are not an issue._

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"The world naturally tends towards chaos," L murmured, sectioning the sponge cake into three columns.

"Then why do anything at all?" Light snorted with a wry smile. "Why go halfway?"

L swept the icing off the surface with a fork, piling the heap into his mouth. "By 'halfway,' do you mean to imply that only absolute anarchy or authority would be holistic?"

Backpedal, backpedal.

Light forced a curt chuckle.

"You misunderstood, Ryuuzaki."

Full throttle.

"It merely seemed odd to me that you would find pleasure in small victories when you know it's fruitless in the long run."

L paused mid-bite, turning to face an empty room.

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_"What shall we read tonight, Light?"_

_The five year old stared up at the ceiling. Yagami Sachiko found his habit endearing. He must be fascinated by the ceiling tiles. I bet he counts them all the time. Such a smart, young boy._

_But Light was rolling his eyes._

_"The same one. From yesterday."_

_"Are you sure? 'The Ogre of Rashomon' again?"_

_"Yes," he enunciated crisply._

_With a wary sound of concession, his mother regaled him with the tale of the brave warrior, Watanabe, and the enormous, deceitful ogre._

_". . . The ogre sought to terrify his foe, but Watanabe never flinched . . ."_

_Sachiko broke off when she saw the soft rising and falling of her son's chest. She gently brushed his bangs over his forehead out of the way. "Good night, Light."_

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Matsuda groaned as he entered the office, dumping his files unceremoniously onto his desk.

Repressing an irritated tick, Light spared him a glance over the rim of his laptop. "Rough morning?"

"The opposite," the young man whined, shedding his oversized trench coat. "I can't sleep at night, and can't help the paranoia during the day, wherever I go… despite all the grim news we've been hearing about Kira's murdering spree, nothing has changed in my personal life. My alarm still goes off at 6:30 AM, and no one's hiding behind the shower curtain. The contrast is just so... _jarring_."

Light begged to differ. Danger kept him safe; danger kept him on his feet.

Danger kept him motivated.

"It makes me wish, sometimes," Matsuda continued, in what the others feared would become an unsolicited stream of consciousness, "that the city had a hero. You know, the comic book variety."

Aizawa sighed, rubbing his temples.

Light shrugged. "Those storybook heroes—valiant as they are—never bring permanent peace."

Matsuda froze, a chocolate-chip cookie dangling from his mouth. The investigator stared at the boy for a full minute before he burst out laughing, jolting his office chair back a few paces.

The boy did not find it particularly funny.

"It's a bummer, isn't it? Nothing is permanent, Light."

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He twitched involuntarily whenever the phone rang.

_Near has died. Mello has died._

He heard it over and over in his mind.

Wish fulfillment.

Pathetic.

"Light?" Matsuda's worried tone shook him out of it. "You okay? You were mumbling to yourself..."

Light wished he could kill him, too.

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Isn't it ironic that the world cannot extirpate all of its criminals, or even summon the resolve to try—but then comes along one who can, and the world is suddenly motivated to take out the man doing what they are doing, only better?

Matsuda turned to face Light, his eyebrows straining towards his widow's peak. "They've got your sister."

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You have to be inhuman to do what it takes.

You have to be inhuman to be godly.

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"You're going mad, aren't you?"

A cold laugh. "You sound pleased about it, Ryuk." Light splashed his face with ice-cold tap water, staring at his dripping reflection in the mirror. He felt the weight of history as an anvil on his back, disfiguring his spine, his composure. They all went crazy in the end. He knew the story: the hero loses his mind to his inability to change the world, and the world writes him into a textbook and comments on his failure with a righteous "I told you so", sealing his fate as a pitiful criminal.

Why did they lose it? Were they not enough? Or was everyone else not enough?

It is said that one man cannot change the world.

It's not enough. Fifty-four pages of the Death Note have been filled top to bottom, side to side, front-and-back, with names of the punished. But it's not enough. It is nowhere _near _enough and Light would laugh at the absurdity of it all if he could only remember how. His laughs didn't sounded like laughs anymore.

They were encumbered chuckles, superficial chortles, or embittered grimaces.

Every day there are more.

Every day he is still one.

He had the vision of a god and the hands of a slave.

Light scrutinized Ryuk, wondering what he would be like as a human.

Wondering if he would deserve to be written into the Death Note.

Ignorantly blissful, Ryuk bit into an apple, juice frothing at his lips. "It's quite entertaining."

The world still mocks him.

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"Greetings, Yagami Light. Or should I say Kira?"

A bold, serif "n" took over the entire screen, unnervingly similar in effect to a dead-end sign. Light bristled. _You know nothing about my goals._

The voice crackled with static, its intonation sterile yet viscous, pooling around his ankles.

If he thought L was a pain in the ass, Near was a fucking migraine.

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Light started when Ryuk's reflection appeared behind his in the mirror.

"Getting jumpy, are we? Have you finally lost your cool?"

"You wish," he retorted. A manic grin rippled along his lips as his chest tightened to the point of acute pain. "The fight has only just begun."

It takes two Ibuprofen tablets for the headache to subside.

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"Is Light doing well?"

Ryuk scrutinized the female shinigami, eyes comically wide. "When did you develop a soft spot for Light?"

Rem shook her head. "I couldn't care less about him. But Misa's best chance at happiness is contingent on Light's success."

Ryuk began devouring an apple. Rem frowned as his spittle sprayed her face. "I don't know if I'd bet on him anymore," he confessed, in a rare moment of seriousness. "The boy's trudged so far down the muddy depths of hell, he's lost sight of heaven." Then he cackled, and the tension relaxed. "Seems this play has begun its final act."

"What did I tell you about humans, Ryuk?" Rem sighed, her bony arms clacking against her side. "They never learn."

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Near was everywhere.

Meticulous.

Light felt his brain swelling with white noise.

A deep breath.

A chuckle.

Because none of it really mattered anymore. Dreams were but broken glass and bloodied hands.

A spate of hatred bubbled in his gut, but all that came out was the reedy chuckle of a man who had gambled his life on the double-or-nothing.

"Do you want to feel better or get better?" he posed, lethally calm. "If it's the former, you're on the right track. If it's the latter, it's too late for society." He laughed. "Once I'm gone, everything will revert to its previous, dysfunctional state. You can all mourn the loss of a would-be Utopia while you feel better for catching me."

"Was it worth it?" Matsuda whispered, eyes glinting with _if you answer incorrectly, so help me Light, I will put a hole through your goddamned soulless heart._

The corners of Light's lips pulled upwards. "What can I say, Matsuda..." he sighed, chock-full of dry humor.

The pistol in his coworker's hands trembled.

"_I was so close."_

_Bang._

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Everyone will join hands to tear something down.

The creator stands alone.

It has always been this way.

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Chemical equilibrium, in our blood pH, in our banal habits, in our societal flaws.

_". . . The ogre was afraid of Watanabe's great strength and courage, and never bothered Kyoto again."_

_"The ogre really stayed away from the city? Forever?"_

_Sachiko smiled warmly. "Forever."_

_Forever._

Light choked on the thought as his blood filled his lungs.


End file.
